NCAA death penalty: Could recruiting scandal doom University of Louisville basketball?

Allegations include payments of $100,000 from a company to the family of an unnamed player to secure his commitment to a public Kentucky school whose enrollment matches that of University of Louisville.
USAToday

Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim, second from right, and FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney, Jr., right, hold a press conference to announce the arrest of four assistant basketball coaches from Arizona, Auburn, the University of Southern California and Oklahoma State on federal corruption charges, Tuesday Sept. 26, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)(Photo: Bebeto Matthews, AP)

The NCAA has not used the "death penalty" — removal of a repeat-violator program's right to compete for at least a year— to punish a Division I athletics program since February 1987 against Southern Methodist football.

The term "death penalty" has been phased out of the NCAA's bylaws in recent years, replaced by the notion of "aggravating factors."

The earlier U of L basketball recruiting scandal would count as an aggravating factor according to the first guideline: “Multiple Level I violations by the institution or involved individual.”

“An aggravated case is one in which aggravating factors for a party outweigh mitigating factors for that party,” the bylaws say. “A case should not be classified as aggravated solely because the number of aggravating factors is larger than the number of mitigating factors. An egregious aggravating factor may outweigh multiple mitigating factors.”

Should a program already facing sanctions commit another major infraction, that would certainly qualify as an aggravating factor, and those could lead to more severe punishments than it would have otherwise faced.

The death penalty isn't a common part of NCAA lingo any longer, but as a punishment, it isn't off the table, either. That, however, would be up to the NCAA Committee on Infractions to determine how "egregious" an aggravating factor should be in order for a repeat violator to face the possibility of the death penalty.

“(Rick) Pitino and Jurich both need to go,” Forde wrote. “And the basketballs need to be put away for a year or more. Shut the thing down.

"No hometown college basketball team in the city of Louisville, arguably the most passionate metro area in America when it comes to that sport? It could happen. It should happen. To devastating financial and civic effect.”